In CHARLIE CHAN AND THE YELLOW PERIL (Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, 2020),  the artistic partnership collectively known as Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries (YHCHI), edit an Italian-dubbed version of the film Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1939), adding text and music to tell a story of migration to Canada that challenges racist and xenophobic stereotypes with acidic mockery and table-turning irony.

(YHCHI, 2020a)

Experiencing CCAYP is entertaining and demanding. Although viewers may be unfamiliar with the source material, the text foregrounds its questionable orientalist origins (Karmen Lee, 2021) by surfacing anti-immigrant tropes and presenting them in bold characters that invite ridicule. Erasing the standard investigation drama of the original, the imposed migration narrative attacks the fetishisation and fear of the sexual and economic ‘other’. The irony of taking seriously such ideas as the irresistible attraction of ‘hairless’ Chinese males with superior maths and economic abilities, lethal martial arts skills, and a longing to raise a brood of ‘mixed race’ kids whilst living off unemployment, produces, in the spirit of Bakhtin (1968), a carnivalesque upended world that exposes still-extant stereotypes and inequality.

By fixing text in one place, controlling our reading speed, and combining image, text, and sound, CCAYP is an example of how YHCHI’s work “performs its difference from a codex book” (Hayles, 2008, p. 30).  The rapid presentation means jokes and allusions may be frustratingly missed, but also makes CCAYP ripe for repeated viewing. Arguably, the exuberant and taboo-smashing entertainment value alone makes rewatching enjoyable. In addition, at just 22 and a half minutes long and freely available via the artist’s website, it is highly accessible. 

(YHCHI, 2020)

YHCHI’s use of text can be situated both within the history of avant-garde poetry including symbolism and modernism, and electronic literature as kinetic poetry, especially the dominance of works in Shockwave and Flash that emerged in the 2000s (Rettberg, 2020, p. 139). Whilst these tools have faded from use (Rettberg, 2020, p. 145), YHCHI still employ Flash aesthetics. But rather than being outmoded, it should be noted this 2020 work was commissioned by the University of British Columbia, partly in response to anti-Asian sentiment during the COVID-19 pandemic (Wong, 2021), attesting to continuing interest from the art and academic worlds.

Those familiar with YHCHI may feel CCAYP is less impactful than their other work. Compared to, for instance, NIPPON (YHCHI, 2003), the music in CCAYP is not tightly synchronised to the text and only subtly shifts with the narrative, arguably reducing the soundtrack to atmosphere. This is addressed in the epilogue, where the visuals freeze into still images, and the text lands on the beat of the new musical accompaniment, adding a welcome twist in style. Still, the role of music is undeniably reduced. Similarly, CCAYP is less formally inventive than other YHCHI works. Besides an ironic use of an ‘oriental’ typeface for the opening and end title, the text is uniform and not animated in the interesting ways noted in NIPPON (Hayles, 2008, pp. 126-129).

(YHCHI, 2020)

However, this reduces YHCHI’s work to a box of tricks and ignores the character of CCAYP. Constructing a new and layered narrative at a third of the original 67-minute running time is an achievement. Moreover, NIPPON is produced in an essay mode, whereas CCAYP is narrative requiring a dual reading of the images and the text, any more visual or auditory effects would likely prove distracting.

(YHCHI, 2020)

Those looking for digital literature to be more ‘interactive’ may also be disappointed. However, Rettberg explains that while many interactive works occupy the user with configuring the interface, YHCHI focus viewers on interpreting the text and its relationship to ourselves and the medium (Rettberg, 2020, p.146).  Placing CCAYP within a context of poetic digital texts, we might consider Rettberg’s (2020, p. 146) comment that interactivity is “absent in many of the most celebrated works of digital poetry”. Lastly, as well as the multimodal content, the many sociological and cultural levels of signification at play already require considerable mental ‘interaction’ from the viewer.

(YHCHI, 2020)

The use of meta-textual counter-narrative, pointed humour, and layered modalities, make CCAYP a rich text for analysis and enjoyment by senior students. But the question of where it ‘fits’ is telling. Karmen Lee refers to CCAYP as a “short story” and a “film” (Karmen Lee, 2021) in the same sentence. The work also exists within the modern art world, characterised as “digital installation” (M Plus, n.d.). This instability is characteristic of electronic literature works, which have been described as “hopeful monsters” (Hayles, 2008, p. 4) or chimeras.  Therein lies their value. CCAYP is a work that could be used for linguistic study, visual literacy, media studies, and sociological analyses. But it would be almost impossible to explore these aspects in isolation. CCAYP evades these disciplinary ‘borders’, with a form that refuses to settle and a narrative that dissolves the constraints of racist caricature.

(YHCHI, 2020)

References

Bakhtin, M. (1968). Rabelais and his world. M.I.T. Press.

Hayles, N. K. (2008). Electronic literature: New horizons for the literary. University of Notre Dame Press.

Karmen Lee, M. (2021). The minor key in Young-Hae Chan Heavy Industries: Charlie Chan and the yellow peril. Canadian Literature. https://canlit.ca/article/the-minor-key-in-young-hae-chang-heavy-industries-charlie-chan-and-the-yellow-peril/

M Plus. (n.d.). Charlie Chan and the yellow peril. https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/collection/objects/charlie-chan-and-the-yellow-peril-2016755-91/

Rettberg, S. (2020). Electronic literature. Polity Press.

Wong, D. (2021). COVID-19 vulnerabilities – Asian racialization, coalition and creativity. The University of British Columbia. https://pwias.ubc.ca/ideas/wall-stories/covid-19-vulnerabilities-asian-racialization-coalition-and-creativity/

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries. (2020). Charlie Chan and the yellow peril [Video]. https://www.yhchang.com/CHARLIE_CHAN_AND_THE_YELLOW_PERIL.html

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries. (2003). Nippon [Video]. https://www.yhchang.com/NIPPON_V.html